#100222

I almost made my first mark in this house, while I was painting my rainbow maker pink, I held the tube of paint upright, and carefully squeezed it, hoping the paint would reach the top so I could get some on my paintbrush, but without any warning, a drop of paint leapt out of the tube, straight up in the air~ I thought it would fall down with a big splat, but it floated down- it was a pink bubble. it surprised me, but I just got a rag and some (eco friendly) cleaner and cleaned it off the carpet. I’ve been really careful in this house, because I’m afraid of getting in trouble, so I worried that it wouldn’t come off, but it did. if it hadn’t, it would join all the other marks, the scars that tell a story about who lived here.

there are ten patches of a slightly darker paint on the walls where holes have been repaired, one is the shape of a fist, just like the one in the first house I lived in that I noticed but never questioned.

there’s dirt and dust all around the front outside, where visitors would first see if they came to the house. and through the fence near the clothesline, I found: faded pegs, a padlock, a dirty bar of soap, and what looks like the skin of a wallet, while I was rescuing my pooh bear towel with a fishing rod I made out of a stick, some yellow yarn, the hook of a coathanger and some magnets. they gave up on their lost things, but I didn’t.

if this house belonged to me, I’d probably not clean the pink paint off the carpet, and by the time I left, there would be marks of not just colorful paint, but biodegradable glitter, lots of tea, kitty whiskers, claws, and fur, tiny bits of pink and white cotton thread, because those are the only two colors I have for all my sewing, and rainbow polkadots all over the walls from the colorful sticky tack I use to hang up my coloring ins and artwork.

this morning I made another mistake, when I opened my bottle of pills (which of course I painted the cap pink and made my own label with a bunny nurse and a loveheart and two flower stickers) it fell and the pills spilled out spectacularly, I laughed at how dramatic it looked, but I still felt fear throughout me.

I told myself “it’s okay, are you okay?” and I replied “I think I just have fear leftover.” (save from the echoes)

I reminded myself “we’re here now, in my house it’s okay to spill things, you weren’t being careless, you do this every day and that’s never happened before, you couldn’t have known they were going to fall. you didn’t do anything wrong.”

and so I was smiling as I picked them up.